The Apple AI Monopoly Is Over

Since Apple Intelligence launched, one company has had a privileged position inside Siri: OpenAI. That's about to change. According to a Bloomberg report published Thursday, Apple plans to open Siri to rival AI assistants — including Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini — when it ships iOS 27 this fall.

How It Will Work

The integration follows the same pattern as the current ChatGPT feature: when Siri can't handle a query on its own, it will offer to route the request to the user's preferred AI assistant. Under iOS 27, users will be able to select which service they want through a new "Extensions" option inside the Apple Intelligence and Siri settings panel.

Apple plans to provide download links for chatbot apps from within the settings UI, and any AI app distributed through the App Store will be eligible to participate in the program — provided the developer enables support for the new extension APIs.

Why Apple Is Doing This

Bloomberg suggests a key motivation is financial: Apple earns a cut of App Store subscriptions, and a broader AI marketplace inside Siri means more subscription revenue flowing through Apple's ecosystem. Opening the platform also reduces Apple's dependence on any single AI partner — a strategically sensible move given how fast the competitive landscape is shifting.

Apple is still planning a full Siri overhaul, and will release its own chatbot version of Siri based on Google's Gemini models — but Extensions will give users the option to direct requests to their own preferred chatbot instead.

OpenAI's Exclusive Era Ends

For OpenAI, this is a meaningful shift. ChatGPT's integration with Apple gave it default access to hundreds of millions of iPhone users with no friction. That privileged position will remain intact for existing users, but the competitive moat shrinks considerably once Claude and Gemini are one settings screen away.

Elon Musk's xAI startup, which has been pushing for Grok to be included in iOS, had previously sued both Apple and OpenAI over what it called a conspiracy to preserve their dominance. Under the new framework, Grok would presumably be eligible to participate in the Extensions program — potentially giving Musk's AI a direct line into iPhones for the first time.

The Announcement Timeline

• Apple plans to officially announce the new Siri and the third-party AI Extensions feature at WWDC 2026 on June 8.
• iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 will all support the new AI Extensions framework.
• AI companies will need to update their apps to enable support for the feature.

For users, this is genuinely good news — the ability to route questions to your preferred AI assistant, rather than whatever Apple's current default partner happens to be, is a meaningful upgrade in autonomy. For the AI industry, it signals that the battle for consumer mindshare is moving directly onto Apple's hardware — the most coveted real estate in consumer tech.